CmakePresets: Selecting of build targets seems not to be supported or not working

Brief Issue Summary

The CMake Tools when using kits and variants allow easy selection of the current build target using either a command or a selector in the toolbar next to the Build icon. It is very easy to switch between different compilation targets in multi-target cmake files or alternatively selecting of [all].

Example:

The new CMake Tools “CmakePresets” feature does unfortunately not offer changing the target. Neither is there a similar target icon/selector in the toolbar nor seems there to be a way to change the target otherwise. The Cmake: Set Build Target command is not even listed on my machine nor does running CMake: Set Debug Target work either, but at least the command is listed.

Platform and Versions

• Operating System: Windows 10
• CMake Version: 3.20.2
• VSCode Version: 1.56.1
• CMake Tools Extension Version: 1.7.3
• Compiler/Toolchain: not relevant

[craigscott-crascit]

Hey folks, CMake co-maintainer here. I’m seeing this issue really hurting adoption of CMake presets among the user community. Anyone who works on a non-trivial sized project is going to be hitting this problem.

I was trying out the suggested workaround of using Shift+F7 to build a specific target, but I found that when I did that, I didn’t get a list of defined targets to pick from and instead had to manually type in a target name. No developer is going to be happy doing that every time they want to do a build in their day-to-day workflow. The combinatorial explosion that would result from having to create a build preset for every target and every configuration is also not practical and not friendly to users. There’s some further context in the upstream CMake issue: https://gitlab.kitware.com/cmake/cmake/-/issues/22538

Is it possible to consider @hwmaier 's suggestion and re-enable the “CMake: Set Build Target” code, at least for now while a deeper solution is being worked on? That would at least give users a considerably better experience with presets in the short term for what seems like pretty low cost (given the code is already there and was used previously before presets came along). Even if it was hidden behind some kind of experimental or “use at your own risk” flag, that would be considerably better than what we have now.

And to re-iterate, this is really hurting adoption.

[KUGA2]

We got excactly the same usecase as @hwmaier.

Multiple platforms and toolchains and big projects with many targets. Users want to build only a single targets, they currently develop for faster test build or debug.

PS: the proposed target selection statusbar button should also be used for the play and debug button! (similar to this request https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-cmake-tools/issues/1941)